1. Field of the Invention
This invention is in the field of education and entertainment and, more particularly, is a toy puppet that is convertible into a book and vice versa.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A significant problem in today's modern society is developing a child's reading and thinking skills. Television and video games, which consume a large portion of a child's free time, do not develop these skills.
A significant portion of a child's intellectual capacity, and a child's ultimate desire to engaging in intellectual activities, is determined within the first years of life. It is important, therefore, to encourage a child to read and develop intellectual skills at a very early age.
Keeping a child interested in reading, especially during the early years, is often difficult. New and innovative means for peaking a child's interest in reading, such as exciting book material, are needed.
Further, children need to "play" in order to develop both their motor skills, and their intellectual capacity through their sense of imagination. This "play" is useful in developing a child's oral skills as well, as the child normally talks and makes other sounds while acting out various scenarios.
Puppets have proven useful in prompting the desired "play" activities. Puppet theater is thought to have its origins in the orient about 4000 years ago. It migrated from the orient and flourished in the early Mediterranean civilizations. Wandering showmen of the Middle Ages used puppet theater as an entertainment medium while churches of the Middle Ages used it to portray the scriptures. Since the Renaissance, puppet theater has been an established form of entertainment in Europe from where, in the nineteenth century, emigrants brought it to North America.
A critical difference between human theater and puppet theater is that an actor in human theater represents a character, whereas a puppet in puppet theater is the character. In other words, the puppet has the potential of being something that is the essence of a character and nothing else.
Because the puppet's potential, it has attracted the attention of artists such as Edward Gordon Craig, Jean-Baptiste Moliere, Jean Cocteau, Paul Klee and George Bernard Shaw. Additionally, it has aroused the curiosity and sparked the imagination of generations of children.
The puppet may, for example, consist of a mitten-like body connected to a feature such as a head. A person's hand fits into the body. Movement of the head or other features of the puppet is accomplished by the person manipulating her fingers within the body.
When the puppet is combined with a book, text of the book may be used to define the puppet's character. The combination of a puppet and a book is exemplified by U. S. Pat. No. 3,918,180 where three-dimensional puppets extend through openings in the pages. However, because the book and the puppet are visibly connected, the puppet becomes a demonstrable extension of the book; it loses the potential of being a completely independent entity, i.e. it can not be the essence of a character.
Heretofore, a puppet and the book have not been combined in a structure that maximizes the potential of both a book and a puppet.